Sensitive Subjects

It seems that the festival of spending around ADAS sensors is just beginning.

August 1, 2024

Sebastian Blanco

Part of what complicates the future of ADAS and automated driving is that vehicles can all have different sensors that approach driving problems differently from one another.

You’ve got regulations, cost and personal preferences all getting in the way of the next generation of

automated vehicles. Oh, and those pesky legal issues about who’s at fault should something happen. Under all these big issues lie the many small sensors that today’s AVs and ADAS packages require. This big/small world

is one topic we’re investigating in this issue.

I won’t pretend I know exactly which combination of cameras and radar and lidar sensors works best for a given AV, or whether thermal cameras and new point cloud technologies should be part of the mix. But the world is clearly ready to spend a lot of money figuring these problems out.

For example, the overall automotive lidar market will grow to $9.5 billion by 2034, with the market focusing on “beam steering technologies, performance improvement, and cost reduction in lidar transceiver components,” according to IDTechEx. Similarly, Allied Market Research predicts that by 2032, the automotive smart camera market will grow to $27.2 billion, up from $3.4 billion in 2022. The leader here will be the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) segment, which “contributed nearly four-fifths of the total revenue in the global automotive smart camera market in 2023,” and Allied expects CMOS to “maintain its dominant position throughout the forecast period.” The radar zone will be busy, too, finding the patterns in all mankind. Fortune Business Insights predicts that the global automotive radar market will grow from $4.74 billion in 2023 to $5.11 billion in 2024 and then to $11.23 billion by 2032. The growth here will be driven by stringent government safety regulations and an increasing overall demand for passenger vehicles, especially in developing countries.

As fascinating as future sensors are, some of the sensors installed in today’s vehicles are already hard at work making tomorrow’s AVs better. I listened to a presentation by Mobileye’s senior director of ADAS business development, Yoni Epstein, at AutoSens in Detroit this spring, and he pointed to his company’s use of crowdsourcing to improve its Road Experience Management maps. Mobileye’s idea here is to let cars on the road send continuously updated information to Mobileye in order to create maps that other AVs can use.

“By the end of last year [2023], we collected nearly 50 billion kilometers (31 billion miles) of road data, almost 80 million kilometers (50 million miles) being harvested daily,” Epstein said. “The crowdsourcing fleet was composed of 5.5 million cars. These are the figures from last year, so you can assume that these numbers are just going to keep growing over the coming years as more and more OEMS join the REM fleet.”

Mobileye has various chips installed in over 800 models worldwide, representing over 187 million chips. By 2032, Epstein said, the company expects to have chips in over 300 million vehicles. “These are life-saving technologies, and 300 million cars around the world that have these technologies is a great achievement that we’re very proud of,” he said.

Our cars are getting hungry for more sensors, and OEMs and suppliers are all rushing to serve up just the right package. With all of the tech advancements being announced and more money in the pipeline, it’s an energizing time to be into sensing. But let’s not forget the capabilities of the sensors that already exist.

Sebastian Blanco is editor-in-chief of Automotive Engineering.